Requiem For a Dream review


Last night I watched Requiem For a Dream, a movie from 2000 which gets pretty good reviews all over the web.

This movie follows the lives of four persons: Harry Goldfarb, his mother Sara, his girlfriend Marion Silver and one of his best friends, Tyrone C. Love. One of the central themes in this movie is self destructing obsession, Sara is addicted to television and in the movie you can see how her life spirals downwards after she gets a phone call that she will be invited to participate in her favorite TV show. She’s really looking forward to her appearance in this show and wants fit again into her favorite red dress. The dress is too small for her and she gets obsessed by her weight, Sara gets addicted to diet pills which change her behaviour and give her hallucinations.

Her son Harry, Marion and Tyrone on the other hand are casual drug users with ambitious plans to become rich by dealing heroine. Initially their ‘business’ goes pretty well but as they strive to reach their dreams their life just ends up worse and worse.

Requiem for a Dream photo

The story of this movie is quite depressing and is all about how the life of four people gets totally destroyed by drugs.  This is brought in three phases: summer, fall and winter. In summer everything was still going pretty well and each of the main characters were still relatively happy, in fall their luck gets flushed down the toilet and in winter their lives are a total misery.

Requiem for a Dream isn’t the type of movie that will give you a good feeling, the story is impressive but very cold, explicit and depressing. This gets further reinforced by the soundtrack which uses sharp penetrating strings to create a discomforting feeling. One of the unique things about this movie is that the director, Darren Aronofsky, used lots of very short shots throughout the movie. For instance, you get to see lots of very short closeups which show what happens when one of the characters injects heroine.

I give Requiem For a Dream a 8.5/10.


2 responses to “Requiem For a Dream review”

  1. I agree it is depressing. It’s a very slick movie, though. The relentless, fast paced editing really has an effect.

    I saw it several years ago but some of the scenes still haunt me as if I saw it yesterday. So, a very powerful film for sure.

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